Maybe I’m not messing it all up

If you are fortunate enough to wake up and greet the days and years over a long enough period, dates of importance seem to gather themselves into the fabric of your life.

Michael Jones

In two weeks I will be celebrating a few milestones in my life, although I am not quite sure that I am ready for all of them. Such is life, right? If you are fortunate enough to wake up and greet the days and years over a long enough period, dates of importance seem to gather themselves into the fabric of your life.

The most obvious of the ones in my life at the moment is my birthday. On the 23rd I will be 42 years old and that both amazes and terrifies me all at the same time. As a child I used to count forward the years and amaze myself with how far into the future it would take me to see when I would be 30, 40, etc. To be staring one of those faraway numbers in the face just reminds me of how fleeting my life seems. Even where I in the best of health and fitness I know that the odds are now in favor of there being less days ahead of me than came before...and that is a sobering thought.

I am not so frivolous as to play the numbers game and wonder where I will be in another 42 years as the answer may not be one I'd like to hear, ya know?

The reason that I'm perhaps a bit sober about the reality of my own upcoming birthday is what the day before my birthday means to me. Though he lived another three months — until the day before his own birthday, actually — July 22 was the last time I saw and spoke to my father in person. He was scheduled to go offshore for a few weeks and I was moving away before he would be coming back.

Yeah, I was moving, but we'll get to that in a bit.

In the weeks leading up to my birthday my father had done some amazing things for me. Not only did he buy me his old work truck so that I would have something big enough to haul my stuff in, he gave me two checks to help me on my way — one of them for $1,000 and the other blank with his signature.

He told me he knew I would need the truck and the thousand but as he handed me a birthday card with the blank check inside he told me that it was a check just in case I needed more help than I knew. It was something so simple and so earnestly "him" that I never saw it coming.

In the weeks after I moved my dad would call and give the phone to my little sister so I didn't get to talk to him much. He did email me a few times and even then he surprised me by telling me he was proud of me for finally being brave enough to go out and try to make it on my own.

I miss him so much this time of year.

The reason I moved and the last milestone for this month is the day after my birthday. That is the day, you see, where I drove the truck my father bought for me 11 straight hours until I arrived in Oklahoma — where I found myself taking the first steps in a life spent in the company and amazing love of the woman who would eventually be foolish enough to agree to be my wife.

The 11 years we have been together seem as if they were the entire reason I was put on this planet 42 years ago.

It is why I celebrate three days in three ways. I tolerate the birthday, cherish the day after for the fact that it marks the beginning of the most amazing journey my life has found itself taking...that first day, though, the one before my birthday...

That one is a day I spend fighting back tears. I'll fail, though, as I always do. I will cry for the amazing man I said goodnight to all those years ago without realizing I would not see his smile again in this world. I will cry for the fact that my wife never got to meet the man who helped turn me into the man who knows he will cherish her the rest of his days.

And, I weep with joy for the fact that I am fortunate enough to be the son of Alfred and Mary, brother of Michelle, and husband to Rosary — all in 42 years.